Obama has pushed his fledglings to make multiple
"midnight" actions in all areas of government. Congress is
getting ready to repeal them all en masse, hundreds at a time. Trump will
also cancel all Obama's overreaching executive actions that are not overturned
in the courts.

Trump has nominated Rep. Tom Price, a Georgia physician, to
be the head of HHS. He is to replace Burwell. He also nominated
Seema Verma to be the head of CMS to replace the never confirmed Andy Slavitt.
She led the Indiana Medicaid private option.

CMS has issued a proposed rule to allow states to pay
physicians more money than Medicaid only if they had submitted their contracts
prior to July 5, 2016. They believe those payments are unwarranted and are
attempting to phase them out. This means less physicians seeing the
patients.

The House is investigating the ill conceived USPSTF.
They are looking into getting specialist input to the recommendations, those who
actually care for the patients involved. They also are looking into
removing any direct link between recommendations of the group and Medicare payment
policy.

The DC Council has voted to approve legislation to make it
the seventh jurisdiction to approve physician assisted suicide. The mayor
said she will not veto the legislation but may not sign it. The bill
requires competent individuals with six months to live to voluntarily request
the fatal drugs. The drugs are to be ingested by the patient without the
help of the physician.

Arizona Governor Ducey signed an executive order limiting
initial opioid pain meds to Medicaid patients to only seven days. He hope this
will help stem the tide of opioid addiction that has seen 401 overdose opioid
deaths in the state last year. After the second trip to the physician
adults may get longer prescriptions but children will always be limited to seven
days unless they have cancer, chronic illness or a traumatic injury. He
hopes this will take place by April next year. Some physicians and
patients worry about this edict interfering with care.

Minnesota Governor Dayton is very upset at Ocare costing his
citizens a lot of money out of pocket due to high premiums. He is
requesting the legislature to bail out Ocare by agreeing to pay for rebates of
25% to all people who buy this high price spread. Of course the Dem
Governor forgot to mention that the feds are attempting to retrieve $1.2 million
from the MNsure Ocare program for marketing. The state attempted to refute
the audit but is losing. Top

Licensing

The California Medical Board again
disciplined podiatrist Kent Lehman of Santa Ana. In 1992 he had his
license suspended for one year for fraudulent billing. In 2004 he was
placed on five years probation for prescribing weight loss drugs to people who
did not need them. This time he got eight years probation for prescribing
dangerous drugs without a medical reason. He reached a settlement in this
case and also agreed to be restricted as to what meds he can prescribe.
All narcotics are now off limits to him. Top

HIPAA

UMass has agreed to pay the feds
$650,000 for allowing a malware attack and not having proper security.
There was no firewall in place. The attack put the records of over 1600
people at risk.

Mousetrap Pediatrics of Vermont has
agreed to pay a fine of $66,553 to the state. They were accused of
illegally billing Medicaid extra money for patients seen during regularly scheduled
business hours. Top

DISCLAIMER: Although this article is updated periodically, it reflects the author's point of view at the
time of publication. Nothing in this article constitutes legal advice. Readers
should consult with their own legal counsel before acting on any of the
information presented.